Polish History

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Poland's early history follows closely the westerly movements of a set of early Slavic peoples known as the Polanie tribe. These predecessors of modern day.
Poles emerged as the most powerful group of Slavs in the region in the latter part of the tenth century. Their King, Mieszko I, became a convert
to Catholicism after his marriage to a Czech princess. Catholicism took hold very early on in Polish history.
Mieszko was succeeded by Boleslaw the Bold. King Boleslaw's
ambitious leadership formed the foundation of a dynasty that governed
over a territory very similar to that of present-day Poland.
From the reign of Boleslaw at the turn of the first millennium until the years preceding World War II, Poland experienced nearly ten centuries of unrest. Wars were fought;
invaders raped and pillaged, governments came and left.
Only from the fourteenth to seventeenth centuries, when Poland
united with Lithuania under the Jagiellonian dynasty, did the country
find stability and wield political power in Europe. This union
made it one of the most powerful forces in the region at the time.
Throughout the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, the map of Poland changed drastically several times. In fact, from 1795 until the end of World War I, Poland did not exist on the map
of Europe.
Poland declared its independence as a modern republic in November of
1918, on Armistice Day. Independence did not, however, have a settling
effect over the country. War with Russia ensued in
1920, ending in a victory for Poland which resulted in annexation of
some of the territory from what is now the Ukraine and Belorussia.
Expansion did not make for peace and quiet either, though.
Political instability and unrest led up to military rule, which
lasted until the beginning of World War II.
The Second World War ravaged Poland's territory and decimated its population.
The Nazis invaded from the west in 1939 at the beginning of the war. Over the course of six years of war, more than 20 percent of the entire population-six million
people-perished. Of the six million, half were Jewish, murdered at the hands of the Nazis during the Holocaust.
Poland suffered in other ways, too, losing much of its territory and material wealth.
Over a third of all its industrial and agricultural resources were lost.
The destruction of Warsaw during the war serves as an analog to the
rest of Poland's wartime experience. After the Jewish ghetto uprising of
1944, Hitler and the Nazis retaliated by deporting all
750,000 residents of the city to various destinations in the
countryside. Jews were sent to the concentration camps, while the entire
city was systematically leveled with dynamite. Warsaw was
reduced to rubble in a matter of a few weeks, with virtually no
buildings left standing-Poland's proud capital was nearly wiped from the
map on orders from Adolf Hitler.
The period that followed the Second World War brought continued unrest for Poland.
Given the widespread destruction and lack of any solid political
infrastructure, rebuilding the country was not an easy task for the
Poles. After being liberated by the Soviets at the end of the
war, Poland fell into the Soviet sphere of influence.
Though the Soviets wielded power over the Poles, their centralized
form of government did not take hold in Poland in the same way it did in
the other countries of the Soviet bloc.
Acts of rebellion were organized against the communist authorities
over the course of the four decades of Soviet domination in Central
Europe.
The Poles simply did not comply with many Soviet demands.
Agricultural production was never successfully collectivized, and an
independent intellectual life thrived under the auspices of the
Catholic Church leadership.The Poles continued to demonstrate their independent
ambitions through the late seventies and early eighties when the
Solidarity labor union was formed. The strikes initiated by
Lech Walesa and his Solidarity
union in the Gdansk shipyards did much for the revolutionary causes in
Central and Eastern Europe by attracting the attention of
the rest of the world. In fact, the Solidarity movement was so
successful at creating civil unrest that marshal law was declared in
1981 by General Jaruzelski. The Solidarity union leaders were
jailed and their activities declared illegal.
Though the Solidarity movement did much to bring Poland to the brink
of revolution and eventual political reform, the communist party
leadership made significant contribution to their own
downfall. By accumulating massive foreign debt over the years, the
communists had sowed the seeds of eventual economic collapse. The cost
of operating an enormous, inefficient centralized
bureaucracy combined with the energy required to stifle the
reform-oriented demands of an irrepressible population, forced the
communists to bargain with the leaders of Solidarity, which resulted
in General Jaruzelski's resignation and eventual national
presidential elections.

In 1990, the new government instituted an economic
program that was designed to "shock" the system into a speedy conversion
to a free market economy. Though evidence suggests
that this method of economic reform is the most effective means of
economic conversion, it is by no means painless. After the new system
was instituted, the standard of living fell and the
country settled into a dreary economic funk. Unemployment rose above
ten percent and inflation rates skyrocketed.

All is not lost, though. From the rubble of the old system, a burgeoning private sector is emerging. On the positive side, Poland has the advantage of having a relatively young,
well-educated population, especially when compared to the other countries of Central and Eastern Europe.
This bodes well for the future because many of these young people were
not raised
on the communist system, making it much easier for them to
assimilate a new work ethic and lifestyle more adaptable to the demands
of a free-market economy.

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